Re: Workflow

[Stefan Westerfeld <stefan space twc de>]

   Hi!

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 09:50:59PM +0200, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> I just tried BEAST to see if it might be suitable for producing a track.
> 
> I deem it very important to work in an agile way, starting, stopping
> jumping around, looping over parts, listening to sounds and sequences in
> isolation or various combinations ... because there are lots of things
> to try and to tweak, if you want to produce quality.
> 
> With that in mind, I stumbled over several issues:
> - Play/stop isn't triggered with spacebar (quite common with other
> sequencers). There are shortcuts, but not one to toggle Play/Pause.
> - Play after Stop always starts from the beginning.
> - The playhead will happily leave the view. The view should follow the
> playhead. Pagewise, not constantly scrolling.
> - I had to ask on IRC on how to set loop points, despite knowing several
> schemes from other apps. This should not require setting an option.
> Better use L/M/R mouse button for playhead, left and right pointer (I
> think most other apps call it Markers). Or some shift/ctrl-clicks, if it
> has to be.
> - No playback controls, no loop-this-pattern and no solo in the note
> editor (all useful to quickly isolate and keeping in playback of what
> you work on at the moment).
> 
> In the synth-editor, I miss sub-patches. But I guess that's what the
> SubSynth node is meant for? I'd prefer patches as nodes, with just the
> desired ports.

I've looked tested Cubase 5 does, so we have a reference to compare BEAST to; I
think we've got to priorize your suggestions, and start implementing the more
important ones first. I think these are:

* Bind "SPACE" key to play/pause - thats what Cubase does, too.
* Start playing from the last play position - like Cubase.

With just these two changes, BEAST should be much more usable. I'll try to find
the time to implement these two changes. We also might want to add a button to
set the play position pointer to song start, otherwise you'd always have to do
this manually, once the changes are in place.

   Cu... Stefan
-- 
Stefan Westerfeld, Hamburg/Germany, http://space.twc.de/~stefan